Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Citadels

[quote name="Lizard_King"]This is probably one of my favorite games, and easily the most played in my collection. It's portable, inexpensive, plays quickly, and is extremely flexible in terms of number of players (although I strongly recommend the <a href="http://www.faidutti.com/index.php?Module=mesjeux&id=328&fichier=108">"alternate" 3 player rules</a> to ensure the necessary level of uncertainty for all players and avoid an assassin/kingfest). Basically, each turn you choose a role (or two, in the two player game) that has a special ability, and when your turn comes up (each role has a set number) then draw a salary or more building cards and build 1-3 buildings by spending your gold. You can then use your special ability as directed, and re-set for the next turn. Each role also has a color affinity, which if it's anything other than grey gets you a bonus gold (in a game where the base salary is 2 gold) when you build a matching building. There is always at least a 50% chance of being wrong about what another person has chosen because of the way the role selection works (eg the first player randomly puts one face down before choosing, then chooses their role and passes it on. The 2nd player knows 2 cards are missing but can't be sure which one of the two the 1st chose. and so on until the last player who gets to put a spare role face down at the end). The game ends when someone builds 8 buildings total, and then the values of the buildings are added to any bonuses and scores are compared. 1-assassin (grey): Choose another <b>role</b> (not player, so you have to guess what will have gotten chosen and ideally by whom, since you usually want to target the leader), and if someone chose that role, they will not get a turn when it comes up. Because they are dead. Otherwise, you don't draw anything else special and just take normal salary/cards and build 1 max. 2-thief (grey): Choose another role, and take whatever cash they have on hand at the start of their turn (again, important to guess somewhat accurately, since cash on hand varies widely from turn to turn). No other special abilities. The same role cannot be assassinated and robbed in the same turn. 3-magician (grey): Switch whatever cards you have in your hand with anyone else's or in a 1:1 exchange with the deck. Note you can do this after everything else in your turn, so you can potentially use up your last card to build it and then trade a hand of 0 cards with someone else's fat hand. No other abilities 4-king (yellow): Your special ability is to be first player. You still get the first player token if you are assassinated, but you are otherwise neutralized. You draw one gold per yellow building you've constructed. 5-bishop (blue): You can't have buildings destroyed by the Warlord. Unlike the king, your ability is not persistent if you are killed. Draw 1 extra gold per blue building. 6-merchant (green): automatically draws one additional gold that turn, plus any bonus gold for green buildings. Understandably, a popular target for assassination in later turns. 7-architect (gray): draws 2 building cards and can build up to three buildings in a single turn. A popular way to end the game prematurely, although it does require some cash on hand to be effective (and as you can see, the thief, the assassin, etc can neutralize you beforehand). 8-warlord (red): pay (cost of building - 1) to destroy an opponent's building (just once per turn), with 1 value buildings being free to kill. This is especially important if you see someone is about to end the game, or they have obtained one of each color for the bonus, or they have an especially powerful magical building. There's also one additional color, purple, which represents buildings with a special ability that can range from meh to game-changing, and are equivalently expensive but do not provide bonus salary gold. All of these are meticulously balanced in terms of how their place in the turn order works against/for their relative strength at different points in the game, and the game is almost Dominion-esque in how the level of interactivity and attacking varies by group (except that it's mostly a function of personalities rather than switching out the cards, although it does come with an alternate set of roles). You are always hard pressed to decide whether to attack, defend, or focus on building resources. It plays very quickly, most people have the rules down by the second turn (although I strongly recommend photocopying all of the roles onto cheat sheets for new players so they can mentally tick off roles that have been chosen/discarded when it comes time to pick), and I have proved to my satisfaction that it can be played with a wide variety of age and cultural groups from grandparents to teenagers/kids. It's definitely a mechanics over a theme game, but the art and flavor of the attacks gives it a lot more thematic feel than you get from most of these types of games, and the narratives created by the attacking and back-and-forth of the lead are pretty compelling in the end. [/quote]